Alexander the Great

📍Royal Palace of Pella, Pella, Central Macedonia 59035, Greece

“I grew up in the royal palace at Pella, a city my father Philip II transformed from a modest settlement into the greatest capital in Greece. The palace was vast — its mosaic floors depicting hunting scenes and mythological battles, its walls hung with the spoils of a dozen campaigns. It was here that Aristotle came to teach me, in the gardens to the north of the main complex, and where I first studied Homer's Iliad — the book that never left my side. I remember standing on the roof as a boy, watching the armies training on the plain below, knowing I would one day lead them to the edge of the world. When I finally departed for Persia at twenty-two, I carried Pella in my heart across every desert and mountain range I ever crossed.”

Sources: Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander (2nd century AD); Plutarch, Life of Alexander (75 AD); Green, P. Alexander of Macedon (1991), University of California Press; Fox, R.L. Alexander the Great (1973), Penguin